Sunday, July 24, 2011

Is The Norwegian Terrorist A Christian Fundamentalist?



The horrors that Anders Behring Breivik committed in Norway fall under the rubric of domestic terrorism, though currently both international and domestic terrorism tend to be about gods and how the society should be arranged.

After the initial assumption that the attack was by extreme Islamists (visible in many of the early write-ups), it turns out it was by an extreme anti-Islamist who regards most even mildly left-wing parties in Europe as Marxists.

But then political extremes are in some ways not that far removed from each other. The dimension on which to measure political opinions about methods form a circle, interrupted between the two extremes which lie close together, not a straight line where the extreme end-points would be far apart.

The actual platforms of right-wing and left-wing extremists are quite different, of course, and Breivik is of the former kind:
Authorities described Anders Behring Breivik, 32, as a gun-loving, highly religious Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country.
"We are not sure whether he was alone or had help," police official Roger Andresen said during a news conference. "What we know is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist."
Breivik's writings certainly support the idea that he is politically a social conservative of the anti-immigration type. But is he a Christian fundamentalist in the American sense of the term?

So far I have not read any writings by him which would discuss the creed of Christianity or its religious issues. No Bible quotes, no conclusions about what Jesus might want him to do, no great focus on the evils of same-sex marriage or abortion.

He shows some concern about the falling birth rates and the troubles of the nuclear family, and he disapproves of ordained ministers who wear jeans. But he is not the kind of fundamentalist Americans are used to.

What he seems to fear is the death of a Christian culture in Europe, and he sees this as happening through wide-spread immigration of Muslims which will turn the continent into a Saudi Eurabia governed by the sharia laws.

Yet he did not attack Muslim immigrants in Norway but those he perhaps sees as the future "door-openers" for future immigration: The youth of the Labor party (Arbeiderpartiet) which currently governs Norway as the senior partner in a coalition government. Though Breivik would call them Marxists. In that sense the label "right-winger" is more appropriate for him than the label "Christian fundamentalist."